Retail Hell (20 page)

Patty probably didn’t know the word fuck.

Marsha said she’d laughed in Patty’s face when prodded for use of her discount.

“Hon, I’d like to keep my job. I’m retiring soon. You know what retirement is?”

I doubt Patty knew that word either.

Tiffany told me she gave Patty the formal Big Fancy textbook response: “It is a violation of The Big Fancy employment expectations for employees to utilize their discount for anyone else but themselves. Noncompliance results in immediate termination.”

A whole bunch of words Patty probably didn’t know.

“Did she understand all that?” I said.

“I don’t think so. She sort of just stared at me,” replied Tiffany.

Jules was clever when handling Patty’s desire to obtain an employee discount. She quickly brushed off the request, rushed to the clearance table, and showed Patty a similar handbag with a big reduction. “Our employee discount is only 19 percent. This bag is 50 percent off, and it’s gorgeous!”

“Did she buy the bag?” I asked Jules.

“What do you think?” she replied, “Like a rat to cheese.”

I had a quandary: Should I do what Cammie did and tell her to fuck off? Laugh at her like Marsha? Waste my time trying to talk her into another bag like Jules?

So many options for Discount Rat extermination. But would any of them work?

I was hoping that Patty would leave while I was handling the call, but when I finished, she was right there, gazing up at me with the plaid Burberry handbag in her hand.

“Is deescount for Patty now. You give to me your percentages,” she said, flashing her ratty smile.

Since Patty didn’t seem to understand anyone else’s answer, I decided to speak in her own fucked up language.

“Is NO employee deescount for Patty. Is no good. Is no okay. Very, Very, BAD. Patty go to JAIL if use my deescount. Police. Crime. Prison. Big Fancy no like Patty percentages off with deescount. PATTY GO TO JAIL!”

Her face flushed with worry.

“JAIL! Patty not go jail! Ack! Oh my. No, no, no, no, NO!!!”

Patty handed me the Burberry bag and ran off.

Finally I had found a word she knew.

Jail.

Meet Virginia . . . and Virginia. Both haunted The Big Fancy on a daily basis. No, they weren’t ghosts. Unfortunately, they were customers. But I wish they
had
been ghosts! I’d have shooed them away with rice or garlic or burning sage.

Virginia Number One was Retired. Virginia Number Two was Crazy. Retired Virginia was in her late sixties. Widowed. A former bank teller. Crazy Virginia was in her early fifties. Single. Mentally insane. The Two Virginias were polar opposites.

Retired Virginia had bouffant hair the color of gray flannel topping an overly powdered face with too much bright makeup, reminding me of a manic Marie Antoinette. Her clothes were classic, moderately priced designer knit suits, sweater sets, gabardine slacks, and low-heeled dress shoes. And no matter what she wore, a glistening gold cross hung proudly from her neck.

Crazy Virginia had gray-brown frizzy hair the color of dried dog shit over a bloated, pockmarked face with black bean eyes. Her wardrobe consisted of a green-and-blue plaid flannel shirt with holes, light gray sweatpants, and dirty white tennis shoes. Like Retired Virginia, Crazy Virginia also had a cross hanging from her neck, though hers was much smaller and not as shiny.

Crazy Virginia wore the same outfit every single day. The only thing that made me not think of her as a homeless person was the fact that her ratty clothes were laundered, she didn’t stink, and on occasion I’d see her wearing light makeup.

Retired Virginia carried brand-name handbags, and many of them had been purchased from me, usually during sales. Retired Virginia had sophisticated old-lady fashion flair.

Crazy Virginia didn’t carry a handbag. Instead, she clutched a ragged, dirty, old teddy bear that looked as if it had barely survived her childhood. She never bought anything from me. Crazy Virginia had no fashion flair whatsoever. Everyone in the store had nicknamed Crazy Virginia Teddy Bear Lady.

Retired Virginia earned the title of Jabbermouth because of the way she would corner a salesperson, deluge them with her verbal diarrhea, and chatter for hours about inconsequential things in her life that none of us wanted to hear.

The bunions on her feet hurt. She ate a sandwich at The Big Fancy Restaurant that gave her indigestion. Her son was having an affair. She was tired but couldn’t sleep. Jabbermouth Virginia ran one subject right into the next like a demolition derby.

Crazy Virginia, on the other hand, had liar-liar-navy-sweatpants-on- fire mouth and chattered for hours incoherently about her life as a corporate lawyer and about how the Good Lord told her things.

The clients she had were nagging her. She was late for court. Local law enforcement was harassing her. The Good Lord said not to eat any muffins that day. Crazy Virginia spurted out jumbled lies like she was running for office.

The Two Virginias came to The Big Fancy Department Store every day. During the course of their daily rituals, they passed each other constantly. They were like cars with tinted windows speeding down the freeway, ignoring each other. For hours on end they’d wander all over the store, sucking the life out of everyone. Whatever lives the Two Virginias used to live had been traded for marbled floors, mirrored columns, track lights, and the involuntary attention of Big Fancy salespeople.

Jabbermouth Virginia sauntered down the main aisle as if she was tipsy. Crazy Virginia steamrolled down it as if she was power-walking.

It wasn’t until a week into my position that I actually conversed with one of the Virginias.

“You work in Handbags?” Jabbermouth Virginia asked one morning while looking at some new Isabella Fiore bags.

“So I’m told,” I replied.

“Since when do they have men workin’ in purses?”

“Since now, and they’re called handbags.”

“I know that,” she replied, “I was testing you.”

“Did I pass?”

“Suppose you did. How’d you end up in Handbags?”

“It’s where they put me.”

“I guess it’s as good a place as any. Don’t try and sell me another handbag. I need another handbag like I need a hole in the head. Got a closet full of handbags. I can’t wear them all. Why the hell did they change the powder in the mocha lattes at the Coffee Bar? It tastes like chalk. My feet are killing me today, I need a footbath. I have two bunions, one on each foot. Makes walking a bastard. I’m starving. I think I’ll get a pizza from Mario’s. They make the best pizza in town, but sometimes they put on too much sauce. Their sauce gives me the runs. Is there something wrong with the lighting in here? Seems darker than normal. They tryin’ to cut back on electricity? It’s so windy outside. I paid seventy-five dollars to have my hair done, and now the wind is gonna rip it to shreds. I don’t even want to get out of my car. Wonder what’s on TV tonight. Nothin’ but all reruns. Maybe I’ll just go read something at Borders.”

Verbal diarrhea.

I just stared at her.

What the fuck is wrong with this lady? Does she have
Alzheimer’s?
Should I call someone?

Luckily, the phone rang and saved me. Jabbermouth Virginia wandered off to bother some other person. Over time, I came to understand that she was simply chatty, a walking open book. Jabbermouth liked me because I’d stand there and let her gab my ears off.

Sometimes she’d chat about current events, but most of the time it was all about Virginia. Past and Present. I’d heard all the intimacies regarding her life. More detailed than a six-hour King Tut special on the History Channel.

Jabbermouth was born and raised on a farm in Wisconsin; had eight brothers and sisters scattered all over the U.S., some dead, some alive; and she loved babbling about them. “My oldest brother, Jerry, has been dead for ten years,” she reminisced, “But when we were kids, he loved cheese. Used to eat blocks of the stuff. Even as an adult. He’d have nothin’ but cheese and crackers for dinner. His favorite was cheddar. Suppose that could have been the thing that killed him. Too much cheese. I can’t eat a lot of it. I get all bloated and gassy.”

Okay, you can stop now, Virginia!
That’s
way more than I want to know.

“My sister, June, lives in Utah. She’s married to a jerk. I don’t see her often, cause I can’t stand him. I told her if she divorced the bastard, she could come live with me.”

Jabbermouth had been married for forty-three years to a man named Larry, a produce manager at a grocery store. Oddly enough, she didn’t talk much about him, but she did have a lot to say about her children, their spouses, and her grandchildren.

“They’re all driving me nuts. David is cheating on his wife, I’m sure their two teenagers are on drugs, they’re zoned out every time I see them, my daughter, Samantha, works way too many hours at her law firm. She’ll never find a husband. She has no life. I told her to go out and live a little. My other daughter, Karen, is a baby machine. Her husband is a dealer at Toyota. They have six kids! She needs to have her tubes tied. That’s a total of ten grandkids! Can you even imagine? Love ’em all to death, but I can’t keep them straight!”

Jabbermouth resides a few miles from the store in a four-bedroom condo she shares with her divorced son, Rick, and his two small children, Jacob and Julie.

“I don’t mind that they live with me, but geez! They’re like pigs. Always eating. Bowls of leftover cereal everywhere. I’m constantly cleaning up after them in the kitchen, and I have a cleaning woman. Can you even imagine? She’s good for nothing. Lupe is her name. I asked Lupe to wax the kitchen floor, and she tells me no ’cause she doesn’t like my mop. There’s nothing wrong with my mop! Lupe is lazy. Now I’m gonna have to do it myself.”

Jabbermouth constantly updated me about her physical condition.

“Just came from the doctor’s today. Got a clean bill of health. The gall bladder is fine. Thank God they don’t have to remove it. They did some sort of ultrasound, like I was pregnant. Can you imagine? At my age? Still don’t know why I’m having indigestion. Must be the food from the restaurant. I’m so sick of the food down there. Did I tell you that I have a bruise on my leg the size of Kansas? Have no idea where it came from. I think I’d remember if I fell.”

Jabbermouth Virginia complained a lot.

“Nothin but crap on TV nowadays.”

“They came to fix the air conditioning in my condo and got dirt on my carpet.”

“Every time I go to the supermarket, the prices keep going up. Five dollars for cereal!”

“I don’t like that new girl in Accessories. She’s a spoiled little princess.”

“I have so many aches and pains, I can’t keep them straight.”

“The girl at the salon did not do my hair right today. It’s horrible.”

But the thing Jabbermouth Virginia complained about the most was the parking.

“The parking is horrible. I drive around and around trying to get a spot up front. You’d think a mall this size would have better parking. The other day I had words with the parking attendant. I don’t know why, but anyway, he made me mad, and he said where’s your handicapped card after I got out of the car and found a spot up front. I said see, right there. I told ya I’d go around and around until I found a place to park up front. He thought he was being funny by asking where my handicapped card was.”

“Virginia, why don’t you just get a damn handicapped card,” I said one day, after I’d tired of her parking gripes. “It would make things so much easier for you.”

“That’s what my daughter keeps telling me: ‘Mom, why don’t you get a handicapped card from the doctor?’ I could get one from my doctor if I wanted. Well, I’d have to go and get a thing from the insurance companies, but yeah that’s a good idea. I got a parking ticket once cause they were cleanin’ the damn streets and I got Tuesday and Wednesday mixed up. Eighteen-dollar ticket. Sheeez. That taught me a lesson. Every time I’m parking on the street now, I read the sign as soon as I get out of the car.”

Jabbermouth Virginia wouldn’t even stop talking after you’d ended the conversation.

“Gotta get the phone, Virginia,” I’d say while it was ringing, “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay, Freeman, I’m going home. Think I’ll sit in the sun. Maybe read Janet Evanovich. I can’t read her books fast enough. I’m only on
Hard Eight
and she’s already up to twelve something. How can a person write so fast?”

I’d be halfway to the phone and Virginia would still be talking.

While she walked away.

“The grandkids are having a recital tomorrow. That will be exhausting, but my daughter won’t be happy if I’m not there and I don’t wanna upset the little ones, but all those kids everywhere, running around, screaming. I’m exhausted. My nerves can only handle so much. I need to water my plants when I get home. Lupe won’t do it. How hard is it to water a few plants?”

I’d pick up the phone and she’d still be talking, halfway down the aisle, her back to me.

“I’m hungry. Maybe I’ll get some dinner from Mario’s. I hope they’re not busy, the parking is horrible. Need to be home by 4:00 though. May not have time.”